Rachel Kushner

Join Bookworks, Los Poblanos, and AMP Concerts for an evening of exquisite literature in an equally exquisite setting: we are delighted to present Rachel Kushner.

Ms. Kushner will be reading from the newly released paperback edition of her latest novel, Creation Lake. 

This event will take place outdoors under the grand portal of the beautiful and historic La Quinta of Los Poblanos. Join us at 5 PM when the doors open to mingle and enjoy a drink from the cash bar, provided by Los Poblanos. The reading will begin at 6 PM followed by a Q&A and book signing.

Tickets cost $25 and include admission for one and a paperback copy of Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner.

Tickets are also available in-store at Bookworks (4022 Rio Grande Blvd NW, Albuquerque).

Rachel Kushner is the author of the New York Times bestseller Creation Lake, her latest novel; The Hard Crowd, her acclaimed essay collection; and the internationally bestselling novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex from Cuba, as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K. She has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, and was twice a finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Creation Lake was also longlisted for the National Book Award. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books have been translated into twenty-seven languages.

Praise for Creation Lake

"Coolly brilliant and suspenseful... Creation Lake is a class of fiction I have never before found so wonderfully seductive." —Alan Hollinghurst, The Guardian

"At last I get to say how deeply, madly, irrecoverably I loved Creation Lake... it was all stylish and cool and then somehow the book struck a blow to my heart." —Louise Erdrich

"I was completely immersed and mesmerized. Creation Lake is a highly plotted fast-paced noir and yet full of ideas and depth. Rachel Kushner is the most exciting writer of her generation." —Bret Easton Ellis

"Creation Lake reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture. Only Rachel Kushner could weave environmental activism, paranoia, and nihilism into a gripping philosophical thriller. Enthralling and sleekly devious, this book is also a lyrical reflection on both the origin and the fate of our species. A novel this brilliant and profound shouldn't be this much fun." —Hernan Diaz

About Creation Lake

From Rachel Kushner, two-time finalist for both the Booker Prize and National Book Award, a "vital" (The Washington Post) and "wickedly entertaining" (The Guardian) novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner filled with dark humor.

Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics and clean beauty who is sent to do dirty work in France. "Sadie Smith" is how the narrator introduces herself to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to her lover, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian she has met by "cold bump"—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone she targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her "contacts"—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more.

In this region of old farms and prehistoric caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who believes that the path to emancipation is not revolt but a return to the ancient past. Just as Sadie is certain she's the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.

Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner's rendition of "noir" is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner's finest achievement yet—a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.